Posts Tagged ‘007’

Today, Wikibruce received a package via UPS. Its avian contents were simple. A photo of a barn swallow with a hand-written message on the back, a Sony IC Recorder.

The message on the reverse reads:

Greetings from Innsbruck, Geoff.

Spied this fellow building his nest unusually high in a tree. I believe that means the snow will be better here this year. Including a recording of his lovely little song for your enjoyment. Do with it what you will.

Cheers, J

On powering up the recorder, the display shows one audio clip. It’s named “50-112-251-215″, with a song title “barn swallow” by author “Jonathon Jongsma”.

My package, which I noticed was numbered as #8, is only one of few delivered to various sources. ARGN.com also received a package today, reporting on its contents, and discussion has begun at the Unfiction forums.

Puzzling clues…

The four numbers resolve to an IP address, 50.112.251.215. When visiting the IP address as a website, “a top secret” website is revealed for the Royal Secret Intelligence Service. It contains a prompt to analyze audio from your microphone as an aural password verification step.

Putting two and two together, when playing the sound barn swallow audio clip, the user is verified and…

…the adventure begins! Try it yourself, then see where it takes you.

Edited to add this tip: Thanks to ARGN, you can play this audio clip via Youtube after enabling the aural capture. If your speakers are loud enough, the sound should be successfully recognized.

Also of note, viewing the website’s source code reveals a few bits of information hidden as meta data. This text also strangely includes multiple instances of the unicode character 9608:

“For ██ ██ eyes only. If you are not ██ ██ please delete immediately. This ████ provides access to the ██ ██ selection exam which identifies recruits for ████ and ██ ██ in the field. Do not share this link.”

And a strange sequence of the 9608 character:

“██ ████ █ ███ █ ██”

With the next Bond flick Skyfall releasing in theatres on November 9th, could this interactive adventure be the lead-in to a larger ARG-like campaign? Or is this is a one-stop entertainment production?

If you’ve run through the experience, successfully or not, share your experience in the comments below! Or join in the conversation at Unfiction.